onotob

SCP > Bluetooth File Transfer

I know, many people (nerds) reading this post will immediately say "duh", but I just need to comment on this.

Shannon took a trip recently and when she got back I downloaded all the pictures she took onto a MacBook Pro I'm using. Last night she wanted to get those photos onto her own Mac, so we sat down next to each other and fired up the little Bluetooth File Transfer app that comes with OS X.

After selecting the files to send (about 100 images, between 1.5 and 2.5 MB apiece), the first thing I noticed was the terrible transfer rate. 75 KB/s at the top end, mostly in the 50 KB/s range. The next thing I noticed was that the transfer would fail every 5 pictures or so, causing us to start the process over again, manually picking up where the app failed.

After about 3 such failures, I remembered that OS X is built on UNIX and so we had a whole slew of robust applications at our disposal, namely SSH and SCP. So, I quickly made an account for myself on her machine and enabled remote login. A few quick keystrokes and the SCP transfer was started.

The transfer rate jumped into the range of 1.0 - 2.0 MB/s and all the files moved over seamlessly, all with very little initial setup. Even the OS X help files were useful, with a quick search for "SSH" bringing me straight to the document describing how to allow remote login.

So, score 1 for command line.